Praying for Others

The number of people I am praying for grows and grows. Someone is sick. Another is out of a job. Another is mourning a death of a loved one. This is a time of great suffering for many people, so every day there are more requests by e-mail or phone to pray for this or that person.

People have different strategies for keeping track of their prayer requests. I have one friend who keeps a bowl on her dining room table. Every time someone asks her to pray for someone, she writes the name on a slip of paper and places it in the bowl. Another friend, who lives in community, tacks the names of prayer requests on a board so that her sisters see them as they pass by and keep them in their prayers. Someone else keeps a list on the back page of her prayer journal, which has also sometimes been my practice.

Whatever I do, I find myself on some mornings knowing I’ve left someone or something out and so I add a catch-all prayer for anyone I’ve forgotten that I have promised to pray for. Yesterday I added another catch-all.

I was exchanging e-mails recently with one of my Jesuit friends. Like me, Greg is trained as a lawyer and so the concept of incorporation by reference is one that is familiar to us. After several e-mails in which we each asked the other to keep in their prayers certain friends or family members who are suffering, I came up with the idea of adding to my prayer intentions, “and prayers for everyone Greg is praying for.” When I shared the idea with Greg, he said he would do the same. I may still adopt the slip of paper in the bowl idea, but I also like the idea of including another’s prayer intentions into my own and knowing mine are included in his. Kind of like adding a little emphasis to each other’s prayers.

What It Means to Say the Bible is True

One of the things irritating me about a book I’m currently reading is the strange (and unpersuasive) efforts the author makes to prove that certain events occurred exactly the way they are described in the Old Testament. I read and I wonder why the author thinks it is so important to offer this proof.

I don’t have any question that the Bible is a source of truth. However, I don’t think the value of the Bible as a source of truth depends on events having occurred exactly as they are conveyed in the many Bible stories we grew up with.

As I thinking about this I pulled out an article by Luke Timothy Johnson that appeared in Commonweal a couple of weeks ago (fortunately still sitting on the floor in my study), titled How is the Bible True? Let Me Count the Ways. Johnson suggests an approach to the truth of the Bible that resonates with me and that avoids the kind of efforts that so irritated me in reading this book. He talks about an approach of literary imagination that approaches the Bible “not as an anthology of composition locked in the past but as a word that unlocks every present, not as a set of sources for describing relaity, but as a set of witnesses prescribing reality, not as a set of propositions about the world but as an imaginative construction of the world.” The Bible, he argues, creates an imaginative world in which we can choose to create. He elaborates:

In each and every one of its parts and as a whole, the Bible imagines a world as created by and ordered to, cared for and saved by, a God who is at once infinitely powerful and infinitely personal; a world in which God creates humans in God’s own image, with capacities for knowledge and love, pleasure and freedom; a world that is a garden that God plants for humans to enjoy and cultivate. Nothing about the imagined world is empirically verifiable, yet by imagining the world in this fashion, the Bible also reveals reality, and by revealing it, opens the possiblity of humans living in it. By imagining the world that the Bible imagines, humans can imagine – construct – their world as a new creation.

Framing it in this way allows us to think about the question of whether the Bible is true in a different way than, e.g., natural science would approach the question. It turns the primary inquiry in our direction, asking, do we act as though the Bible is true? As Johnson puts it: “Are we engaging the world that the Bible imagines, living in a manner consistent with its vision.” That is a lot more challenging than simply asserting literal truth. And it is a lot more meaningful and productive use of our energies than arguing about whether there really was a flood that wiped out all human beings or whether Lot’s wife was really turned into a pillar of salt or whether Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale.

Prayer for Independence Day

Today is the celebration of Independence Day in the United States. For many it will be a day of BBQs and fireworks, and will include gatherings of family and friends. For too many others, it will be merely another day of illness or addiction, another day of hunger, another day of homelessness, another day alone, with no family or friends.

For many of us, the day will include Mass. Our Mass at St. Hubert’s in a couple of house will use the readings from the Mass for Peace and Justice. And although I sometimes am a little jarred when Masses on days like 4th of July and Memorial Day end with us singing America the Beautiful (I fear it gives some the suggestion that Americans are somehow more favored in God’s eyes than are the peoples of other nations), I do think that taking time on this day of celebration to rededicate ourselves to spreading God’s peace and justice throughout the world is valuable. And so, as we pray in the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass:

All-powerful Father,
today we rededicate ourselves to your service,
and to the works of justice and freedom for all.
As you have called us from many peoples
to one nation,
help us to give witness in our lives
and in our life as a nation
to the rich diversity of yoru gifts.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus christ, your Son,
who lives, and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

St. Thomas

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Thomas, to whom we often give the uncomplimentary moniker, “Doubting Thomas,” a title that ignores the fact that Thomas’ disbelief quickly gave way to belief. (”My Lord and My God!”)

John Henry Newman said something that is intructive to all of us in his suggestion that Thomas’ fault was in “pick[ing] and choos[ing] by what arguments he would be convinced,” in demanding a particular form of proof, rather than examining whether there was enough out there already to convince him. Newman said:

He said that he would not believe that our Lord had risen, unless he actually saw him. What! Is there not more than one way of arriving at faith in Christ? Are there not a hundred proofs, distinct from each other, and all good ones? Was there no way of being sure he came form God, except that of seeing the great miracle of the resurrection? Surely there were many others; but Saint Thomas prescribed the only mode in which he would consent to believe in him.

It is very easy to fault “Doubting” Thomas. But I think many people are guilty of expecting God to act in a particular way, of expecting to find God in the way that we prescribe, of setting the rules by which God ought to operate. Thomas is not the only one guilty of picking and choosing what arguments would convince him. I think we all would do well to examing whether there are ways in which we “prescribe the only mode” in which we will see God.

Franciscan Benediction

I attended a weekday Episcopal Mass with my friend and colleague, Jennifer, the other day. One of the closing prayers was a Franciscan Benediction which I had not heard before, but which a quick search reveals is known by many others. Although I have seen it quoted in many places, none lists an original source for it.

I thought it was worth reproducing in case there are others, like me, who are not familiar with it. It is a good prayer for all of us.

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths,
And superficial relationships
So that you may live deep
Within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression,
And exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice,
Freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain,
Rejection, hunger, and war,
So that you may reach out your
Hand to comfort them and
To turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with
Enough foolishness
To believe that you can make
A difference in the world,
So that you can so what others
Claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to
All our children and the poor.

Amen.

As an aside for those who have never attended one, the Episcopal Mass bears a striking resemblance to our Catholic Mass, although several of the elements – e.g., the confessional rite and the kiss of peace – appear in different places in the liturgy.

I’ll Say I Loved

Although I get an e-mail delivery of Garrison Keillor’s, The Writer’s Almanac, the e-mail sometimes gets buried in my inbox, with the result that it takes a while for me to get to read it. That is too bad, since quite often I find the poem selected for distribution to be quite worthy of attention and reflection.

The last one I read, contained a poem titled A Plea for Mercy, by Ann Porter. The poem begins with a question we can all profitably ask ourselves:

When I am brought before the Lord
What can I say to him
How plead for mercy?

Porter answers quite simply: “I’ll say I loved..”, listing her husband, her five children, summer mornings – the sunrise and the dew, the bird, the flies, and a few other things.

As I read the poem (which you can read in its entirety here) it struck me that it reveals perhaps the best answer we can give to the question of what we can say when we are brought befor the Lord. “I’ll say I loved…I’ll say I opened my heart to the world with love.” If we can say we loved, that we lived a life of love, then I’m not sure there is anything else we need to say.

The First Holy Martyrs

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the memorial of the First Holy Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church. I remember as a child in Catholic elementary school being fascinated by the stories of the martyrs. I remember being particularly struck by the stories of the early missionaries to the American Indians, like St. Isaac Jogues, who was tortured and killed by the Iroquois.

Today’s feast memorializes those sometimes called the “Protomartyrs of Rome.” They were tortured and killed in the first persecution against the Church, initiated by the Emperor Nero after the burning of Rome. (Having burned Rome to cover his own crimes, Nero accused the Christians of doing the burning.) It is reported that some were burned as human torches, some crucified and others fed to wild animals. Their matryrdom occurred prior to the deaths of Sts. Peter and Paul and it is said that the courage and steadfastness of the martyrs in the face of the torture and death was such a powerful testimony that many became converts to the Church.

I read or hear the accounts of the martyrs and I wonder, could I be that strong? Would I be able to show that kind of courage and faith if I were forced to face that kind of suffering? (Or, like Peter, would I deny knowing the Lord to save my skin?)

How I would so love to say confidently, Hey, no problem…sure I could do what they did. And yet a part of me whispers, please do not put me to the test. And so I sigh and I pray for greater faith…greater trust….greater courage. And I pray that if I am put to the test, that God will give me the courage and the strength and faith of the martyrs.

Saints Peter and Paul

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. At one level, celebrating the two saints together may seem strange; we know there was a certain amount of tension between the two of them at times. However, if one understands the tension between them as reflective of a necessary and dynamic tension that is an inherent part of the Church, a joint celebration of the two makes more sense.

In his book, What is the Point of Being Christian, about which I’ve written before, Timothy Radcliffe, OP, talks about the tension reflected in the Last Supper (specifically, the difference between the bread given just to the disciples and the blood “poured out for many”) between “the gathering into communion of these disciples, Jesus’ close and intimate friends, and the reaching out to all, for the fullness of the Kingdom.” He identifies this as the tension between Peter and Paul.

Peter had been called by Jesus to belong to a community that was in its origins Jewish. Jesus may have reached out to foreigners at times but the inner circle, the apostles, were all Jewish and sent, in the beginning, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This was an understanding of the community which, for many of the first disciples, it would have been unimaginable that one might question. But the Church had hardly been founded when Paul’s reaching out to the Gentiles seemed to subvert the core of its very identity.

Radcliffe speaks of a centrifugal and a centripetal force “whose equilibrium had to be maintained if the Church was to avoid becoming either just another Jewish sect on the one hand, or losing continuity wtih its founder on the other.” The two forces, he suggests, are represented by Peter and Paul, whose dying together in Rome may be viewed as symbolic of the Church’s ability to hang on to the dynamic tension.

Happy Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

How God Works in the World

When one looks at the Jesus’ healing of the woman afflicted with hemorrhages and the raising of Jairus’ daughter in today’s Gospel, or Jesus’ healing of the centurion’s servant in yesterday’s Gospel, or God’s causing Sarah (who was way past child-bearing age) to be with child in yesterday’s first reading, and then looks at all of the suffering in the world today, there might be a temptation to ask, why isn’t God performing miraculous deeds today? Why doesn’t God step in now the way he did 2000 years ago. If God could make an old woman pregnant and raise a child from the dead, why is God sitting back not doing something about the problems of the world today? Why doesn’t God appear now?

The short answer, of course, is that the way God works in the world now is through us. In the words a young man once used to describe the message of the Ascension: “The ball’s in our court now.”

Throughout the long history chronicled in the Old Testament, while the Israelites waited longingly for the Messiah, God stepped in now and then to remind the people of His promise of salvation and to give them hope. And then God actually became human, fulfilling his promise of salvation through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. God did his part and before Jesus ascended, he commissioned us to do the rest. The victory already being won, he left us to mop up, so to speak.

We don’t always do such a great job of it. And, sure, it would be a whole lot easier if God just snapped his fingers and got rid of evil, fed the world’s hungry and stopped all the wars and all of the strife. But that doesn’t change the reality that it is our task…the reality is that we are called to be God’s agents in the world today. We are called to be Christ to the world. God is there to help us; God gives us the grace we need to accomplish what God wills and does occasionally give us a miracle as a symblo of hope. But He is not going to do the job for us.

Such Faith

Today’s Gospel from Matthew tells of the centurion who appeals to Jesus to heal his servant. When Jesus agrees to come to cure the servant, the centurion responds with the words that are the basis for those we recite at Mass before receiving the Eucharist: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus holds up the centurion to his followers, telling them that “in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” To the centurion, Jesus says, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” And the Scripture tells us that “at that very hour” the servant was healed.

Every time I read or hear that passage I wonder if I have the faith of the centurion. Would I have been able to walk away from Jesus, secure that Jesus’ merely saying the words would be enough and that the servant would really be healed when I got home? Or would I have been dragging Jesus by the arm to my home so that I could watch and make sure the servant was healed?

Given my tendancy to want to see things for myself, my frequent habit of double checking things I’ve asked others to do for me to make sure they are actually done, I have to wonder. I think sometimes I’m more like the father of the boy needing healing in Mark’s Gospel, who cries out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” And so I pray for the faith of the centurion.